MYTH: The more CEO's are paid the better they COMPETE & perform and thus the greater profits for shareholders and the company. This is nonsense propagated by Reaganomics when America's back was against the financial wall due to te Cold War. It has led to fat, lazy & corrupt executives who take bad risks because the US government has implicitly TOLD them well beforehand that it will bail them out "no (real)questions asked"

REALITY: If first world governments legislated CEO remunerations to be less than twice that of senior government officials, removing subtle forms of bribery & baseless hero worship amongst the vast ranks of elected officialdom, the only COMPETITION for performance goals would be within the company's ranks and between companys. True CEO performance would be stellar & unknowns in listed companies would finally be free to show their worth and forge into leadership roles rather than being blackballed by the unhealthy plutocratic &nepotistic competition that currently exists.

MONKEY in THE WRENCH:
10% of first world populations have 80% of the world's wealth and the other 90% are BEHOLDEN to those rich elites in ways like employment, debt etc. These elite imbeciles are going to be hard to shift, especially when their most prized possessions are monopoly MEDIA empires replete with Fox&Fiends talking heads who make an unjust world seem so Koshy, warm & apple-pie friendly.

LIGHT at TUNNEL'S END:
Adolph hitler had less than 10% of the EURO population under his propaganda control & no one thought he could be defeated for many years. BUT HE WAS! Hitler's mistake was to go too far and that is precisely what the rich 10% have done and beyond media reports of restraint, are STILL DOING at a breathtaking lift-pumping, $oozing-up economic rate. The pump is primed as the stock market moves up&down, up&down....oooozing money from the middle-class to the upper-class as stock market gurus move&shake it with able assistance from self-interested government officials!

THE WAY I SEE IT: Governments of the world have a choice:
Legislate CEO remunerations as specified or face public REVOLUTION of Gail Wynan proportions (http://mk2.porch.org/stories.php?story=01/09/23/2791872).

Ludwig, the problem with your theory is that when you give Govt
employees a monopoly, as you propose, they land up working in their
own self interest. I'd prefer competition thank you.

I don't have a lot of time for Rupert Murdoch, but he wrote
an interesting piece in last weekends Australian and I quote a
snippet :-

*Meredith quotes a former Indian finance secretary who puts it this
way" We got more done for the poor by pursuing a competition agenda
for a few years then we got done by pursuing a poverty agenda
for decades."

What separates poor nations from rich nations is not talent and ability.
The poor have plenty of talent and ability. Usually what
people in poor nations do not have is the opportunity to develop
their talents. That is why trade is such a powerful engine for
prosperity and upward mobility*

Goldman Sachs estimate that the global middle class are growing
by 70 million a year. Free trade has a huge amount to do with
that.

The thing is this Ludwig. You have your large public servant
salary, your car, your house, your computer with internet etc.
People in China and India etc aspire to what you have. Should
they not have a right to your own aspirations?

Population is another matter entirely. As you well know, my
view on that topic is that there are far too many people on the
planet, for us to live sustainably.

Dear Mr Oliver Hartwich,
I could rave on four hours about your article.
But to cut it short I would suggest that you ' go ask the third world what they think of the free market economy' There is none. it's a lie that people like you promote in your little conservative effort to please the ravaging elite. Thumbs down to you mate, go help your pals rape another third world country.
Cheers

I'm glad to see articles such as this...the wheezings of a dying breed, desperate to see the goliath corporate patient emerge from triage with yet another dose of public money to feed its private profit hunger. The free market as we know it is based on pillaging the many for the benefit of a few. And when it begins to fall apart, our corporate freeloaders ensure that government acts as enforcer and ensures those who paid dearly the first time get to pay again. How many countries ravaged by Friedmanesque madness do we need to look at? Chile? Russia? Poland? New Orleans? Bolivia? Iraq? And the human misery is dwarfed by the environmental vandalism of these halliburtons. They not only don't allocate resources equitably they exploit them with total indifferent to the damage they do. Some deaths are more equal than others.

A superb article.

Freedom must always have rules and some regulation to avoid excess.

For example freedom of expression does not include the right to distribute hate speech or child porn, and the fact that some one does does not mean that free speech itself should be curtailed.

Stronger regulation is called for such as exists in Australia, not abolition.

The free market has delivered prosperity and reduced poverty as has no other system, and where the free market has been curtailed as in the 3rd world, the penalty is poverty and persecution.

The answer is to put a bridle on the wild horse, not shackles.

Shadow Minister; "The answer is to put a bridle on the wild horse, not shackles."

Yes

Yabby; "Ludwig, the problem with your theory is that when you give Govt
employees a monopoly, as you propose..."

No, no, I'm not proposing that..... just a stronger degree or regulation. Especially regulation that encourages competition.

"People in China and India etc aspire to what you have. Should they not have a right to your own aspirations?"

Of course they aspire to what we have. So they need the right sort of regulatory regime that efficiently spreads the wealth so that they can all have a decent quality of life (which doesn't have to mean the same level of consumption that we have in Oz), instead of a large part of the wealth ending up in the hands of a very small number of people.